Holocaust

Two sketches by Michalis Kountouris, with strong messages of demonisation of Israel and unacceptable parallelism with the Holocaust, were published in the “Efimerida Syntakton” (EFSYN. – “Editors’ Journal”) on 10th and 11th April 2018. The sketches were commented on with the following article entitled “Bloody Handprints” – published in the issue of the EFSYN of 16.4.18 – by the journalist and General Secretary of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, Victor Is. Eliezer.

The sketches also stirred a reaction from Israel’s Ambassador to Greece, Ms. Irit Ben-Abba (letter to the EFSYN 11/4/2018), and journalist Dimitris Psarras (through his article “We do not Forget the Holocaust” EFSYN 16/4/2018).

Victor Is. Eliezer: “Bloody Handprints” EFIMERIDA SYNTAKTON 16/4/2018

Yom Hashoah. Holocaust Day, 11th April 2018. The Jews mourn for their 6,000,000 fellow Jews who were unjustly and brutally killed in the gas chambers of the Nazi camps! On the same day, in Greece, the “EFSYN”, known for its merciless struggle against anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism, hosted a sketch in which an Israeli soldier leaves the prints of his bloodied hands on the Wailing Wall, next to many other bloody handprints of other people who apparently prayed before him. You know, all the Jews have visited the Wailing Wall, many of us pray and touch the Wall that is what is left of the Temple of Solomon. The bloody handprints, according to the cartoonist, could be the bloody handprints of every Jew who has visited the Wailing Wall! One day earlier, another sketch (by the same cartoonist) appeared in the newspaper, where the Gaza Strip was identified with a prisoner of Nazi concentration camps.

Cantor Haim Ischakis performs El Maleh Rachamim at the Kahal Kadosh Yashan Synagogue in Ioannina, Greece. The video was recorded on Sunday, March 30, 2014 during the Holocaust Memorial Ceremony for the remembrance of the 70 years since the Nazi deportations of Greek Jews. More than 500 people from all over the world, including foreign Diplomats and local dignitaries, attended this moving ceremony organized by the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) and the historical Romaniote local Jewish Community.

The municipality of Kavala has condemned the vandalism promising to fully restore the monument and take the necessary measures to apprehend those responsible.

Though guarded by the police during the night, this is the second vandalism of the newly erected Kavala Holocaust memorial: Just two weeks after the unveiling ceremony on June 7, 2015, the monument was desecrated by a blue paint attack.

Update, 31.03.2017: The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece has expressed in a statement its “deep concern: these acts of desecration show in an obvious way that anti-Semitism -an antisemitism almost without Jews-, racism, and intolerance survive and lurk everywhere in every moment. Every moral, political or other act of legitimation of the nostalgic pro-Nazis increases the risk of the revival of anti-Semitism and of the expansion of such incidents that threaten the values of a modern and democratic society and darken the prestige of our country. Prosecutors should take all necessary measures to arrest the vandals responsible and bring them to justice.” (full statement here)

[On the night of March 24, 1944, the Jewish population of the city was arrested and detained in the Girls’ High School of Kastoria. Three days later, 763 people, and a small number of Yugoslavian Jews who had found refuge in Kastoria were transported to Thessaloniki on vans and then to Poland, never to come back again. via]

“Trezoros: The Lost Jews of Kastoria” is a moving documentary that illuminates the lives of a Sephardic community in Greece whose story speaks for all people who have been decimated by war and discrimination. The story is set in the beautiful, idyllic city of Kastoria where Jews and Christians lived in harmony for over two millennia.

In October of 1940 it would all be destroyed after the invasion of Greece by Axis forces. Initially occupied by Italy, the Jewish community remained safe. After Mussolini fell from power the Nazis took control of the town, dooming the community that had existed since the times of the Roman Empire.

The film uses never-before-seen archival footage, vibrantly bringing to life just one of the many Jewish communities that had existed in Greece before the end of World War II. TREZOROS (Ladino/Judeo-Spanish term of endearment meaning “Treasures”) is a highly emotional story told by it’s survivors, with interviews filmed on location in Kastoria, Thessaloniki, Athens, Tzur Moshe, Tel Aviv, Miami, Los Angeles and New York.

Directors: Lawrence Russo, Larry Confino

[…] For the directors Lawrence Russo and Larry Confino, who are cousins and whose forefathers were Kastoriani, this was more than a family project. Releasing precious oral history narrated by a small group of people, the superbly crafted documentary tells of the suffering of one town, but calls forth the universal quality of community resilience in the face of horrendous odds.

The directors seamlessly and without artifice combine interviews with highly personable men and women of the Sephardic community which was in the 1930s a substantial presence in Kastoria, a stronghold of the Greek Orthodox Church but where Jews and Christians lived in harmony for hundreds of years. The Jewish populace of Kastoria dating from the times of the Roman empire, were to be all but wiped out by the Holocaust.

Compared with the tragedies that hit their co-religionists in much of Europe, the fate of Greek Jews is inadequately known. This film graphically puts that right as far as Kastoria is concerned. On a larger scale, Thessaloniki had 50,000 Jews before World War II and was known as the Jerusalem of Greece. Today there are only about 600 of the faith living in Greece’s second city. [James Brewer, allaboutshipping.co.uk]

Members of Left Anti-capitalist Group (Aristeri Antikapitalistiki Syspirosi) have displayed at the entrance of the Law Faculty at Democritus University (Thrace, Northern Greece) a banner which suggests that Israel is commiting genocide against Palestinians, grassrootreuter blog has reported. It reads: “Not another Holocaust. Solidarity to the Palestinians.”

Photo credit: MotionTeam / Vassilis Ververidis, undated

The photo featuring the antisemitic banner has been published in the leftwing daily newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton to illustrate an article about a discrimination issue at Democritus University.

This is today’s headline on one of the many Nazi gutter newspapers in Greece. It refers to the hanging of a commemorative plaque in the Greek Parliament with the names of all Jewish Members of the Greek Parliament who perished in the Holocaust. All political parties attended the ceremony save for the Nazi Golden Party.

The majority of the municipal council of Volos, a coastal port city in Thessaly, has reportedly refused to adopt a resolution commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. The opposition which initiated the resolution accused the president of the municipal council, George Moulas, of complicity with the Nazi Golden Dawn party.

Rabbi Moshe Pesach in 1939. Source: Wikipedia

The Volos Jewish community has arguably been in existence since the ancient Greek Empire. Last year, Rabbi Moshe Shimon Pessach, an outstanding rabbinic and communal leader whose efforts saved the Jewish community of Volos from the German Nazis, was posthumously honored in Israel. Rabbi Pesach initiated and orchestrated the rescue of the Jewish community with the help of the Bishop of Volos, Joachim Alexopoulos and other non-Jews, saving 74 percent of the Jewish community in a country where 85 percent of the Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. [More information: “The Rabbi and Bishop Who Saved a Greek Jewish Community” by Anav Silverman, April 2015]

The condition of being a refugee is a strange one. In our discussion we will discover how the Jews of Thessaloniki –whose historical existence is at least 2100 years old and whose majority lives for at least 520 years in the city – ended up being refugees in their own city after the Holocaust, and how today the sense of being indigenous as well as a refugee simultaneously coexist.